


We looked at each other

by HelloBerrie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Desire, Drarry, Future love, Hogwarts, M/M, Mirror of Erised, Oneshot, POV Harry Potter, Post-War, Reflection, Romance, voldemort - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 05:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14442258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloBerrie/pseuds/HelloBerrie
Summary: Dumbledore leaves a letter to Harry and another to Draco telling them to look in the Mirror of Erised.





	We looked at each other

**Author's Note:**

> A small thing I wrote. It’s probably not even coherent. It just wanted to write something on the lines of Harry and Draco finding each other through the mirror. I’m probably going to change it later

He had left me a book in the middle of his office. There wasn’t anything that gave away that the book was special in any way. It wasn’t big. The decoration wasn’t elaborate. The title was fairly boring. But for some reason Minerva needed it and found a note in his handwriting directed to me. A note saying so much in such few words. As was his style. “Harry, I know you to be wiser now to be able to use this without losing yourself. You’ll find the mirror in the last place you saw it.” At first I was confused. Why would he tell me something like this now? In the most unstable moment of my life?  
But I went look for it nonetheless. Minerva was reluctant to help me find my way to the room where I fought Voldemort for the first time but she conceded, unable, even after his death, to defy his decisions. The way there was faster and smaller than I remembered, which wasn’t a strange thing. I had grown up.  
The corridor beneath the Devil’s Snare that was at the time dark, humid and claustrophobic, seemed now much wider and open. The room with the winged keys was empty and silent. The chessboard cemetery lacked the broken statues and the eerie feeling. I could now see, in broad daylight that it was just a medium sized hall, with a dome as a ceiling covered with gothic windows. I’ve never seen a dome on the outside of the castle. The next room, was empty of its table and its vials. It looked like the things Hermione, Ron and I had to face, where never there in the first place. As if it were a dream. Or just the memory that it now was. It wasn’t sure that to think of that.  
When I reached the final room, I wasn’t sure I could hold myself straight. My legs were shaking and as soon as I saw the mirror, the memories of that night assaulted me without warning. I could see Voldemort again the mirror, laughing when I defied him. Mocking my parents. I could see the fire that surrounded us. I could feel Quirrel’s flesh burning in my hands. Like I was touching burned log. I could hear his screams. I could feel the cold and sense of despair, the hatred and death when Voldemort spirit passed through me, too strong for an eleven year old to handle. When I was eleven I already knew what hate was, I knew what disdain was. But never did I feel it like when he passed through me that night.  
The room was just as it was that night. The cloister with stairs to the patio, the roman arches that separated the surrounding corridors illuminated by lit candle holders on the walls. The Mirror right at the centre of the patio looking abandoned and less significant than it actually was. That was the thing that I dreaded the most in that whole room. I didn’t want to climb down the stairs again. I didn’t want to see my reflection in that mirror again. I didn’t want to see what the Mirror would show me again.  
So I stood there. At the door that led me to that room. And I didn’t move, unsure of what to do.  
Until I heard the door open again. I turned around and saw the last person I expected to see. The man who saved me, the boy I hated for seven years, the embodiment of everything I despised as a child. The man whose life I saved. The man who cried in front of me just before his trial.  
“What are you doing here?” “Dumbledore left me a letter. What are you doing here?” “Dumbledore left me a letter.” We smiled awkwardly at each other. This was our first exchange of words since the trials. Since the War ended. His presence put me on edge in a much different way it did before. There was sense of threat in his presence but it was completely the opposite of what it used to be. Less visceral and contempt driven and more in a sense of unknown and curiosity. Malfoy was an enigma to me, now that the War ended, with everything that happened, I couldn’t claim to know what he was, who he was. That put me on edge, like I was at an arm’s distance of something I couldn’t grasp. Before the War I could predict him in a way. I could tell what kind of person he was, what his actions would be. What his thoughts were. But he proved himself to be different from my opinion of him. He showed me a different picture. I just wasn’t sure what kind of picture. It was more blurry that the previous one. The idea I had of him before the War was a clear one, I knew exactly what to see, what to expect. Even if it was a lie. This image in front of me what a mystery, this man was a curiosity to me.  
He walked to me and looked to the Mirror in an ignorant confused look. And I realised he didn’t know what the Mirror was. I wondered why Dumbledore had told him to come here.  
“Why is there a mirror in a place like this?”  
“You don’t know it?”  
“No, should I?” I didn’t answer. He shouldn’t. No one should know what that mirror was. Such a thing shouldn’t exist. But I would show him anyway. Dumbledore had led him there so it’s meant something. I started walking down the stairs reluctantly and wary of what I would see. “What do you read in the frame?” “Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi? What kind of language is that?”  
“English.” He rose an eyebrow at the inscription. “I show not your face but your heart’s desire.” I said and watched his face as he figured it out. It didn’t take long. It wasn’t difficult if one knew what to find. And I saw his face deepen, his brow close, his lips purse. “What kind of mirror is this Potter?”  
“It shows you your deepest wish.”  
“Why did Dumbledore want me to see my deepest wish?” I had no answer for him. I asked myself that of course, but I came to no conclusion.  
“Well just one way to find out, right?” He asked rhetorically. I wasn’t ready for this. I stepped in front of the mirror and opened my eyes.  
There was nothing. For a while there was nothing. Just my reflection. The eighteen year old boy, with clothes that finally fit, with new unbroken glasses, still the same disaster of a hair. But there was nothing else. “What do you see Potter?” “It’s strange. I only see myself. It’s just my reflection. It can’t be, that’s not how the Mirror works.”  
“Let me try.” He asked, with a curious voice, already getting closer. I didn’t move, too shocked with his behaviour. He stood right next to me, facing the mirror, with his arms crossed and chin up, as if he was defying it to show him something horrific. And he was right next to me. I could smell his cologne, I could feel his heat. Did he have to be so close? “I don’t see anything. Maybe it’s broken.”  
I shook my head. “That’s doesn’t make any sense. Why would Dumbledore lead us here if it was broken?” “Hmm, maybe. But it’s strange, it only shows us.” And I let go the breath that I didn’t even realise I was holding. It didn’t show me anyone. I looked again to my reflection just to be sure.  
And that’s when he uncrossed his arms. Something glowed in the mirror when Malfoy uncrossed his arms. In his hand. “What his that?” he asked, sounding just as confused as I was. But he wasn’t looking at himself. He was looking at my reflection. At my hand to be precise. And I noticed something that I hadn’t before. In the left hand of my reflection there was a simple ring. On my finger. I rose my hand. There was no ring there. And I looked back at the reflection. The ring was there. And it was smiling. The reflection was smiling. Not at me. At Malfoy. And then we noticed his hand. His reflection had a ring too, just like mine. And he was smiling at my reflection.  
And we looked at each other.


End file.
